But that is also an extremely powerful weapon that is incalculably more demastating them any carrier battle group. It is like a finacial nuclear weapon. What do you think would happen if China suddenly flooded the market with hundreds of billions of dallors worth of US bonds? Sure, China will suffer gigantic losses, but the effects on the US economy will make the dotcom bust seem like a speed bump and may well bring about another great depression, though this time, a global one that will also greatly hurt China. A kind of financial MAD, and that is something US policy makers will have to factor in to any calculations

That’s actually the small part of it. The biggest blast comes from something else.

Why does the US issue bonds in the first place? That’s because it’s on a continous deficit. The problem is that when the US goes into a war, financially it can no longer afford it. Someone has to pay for that war. From 2001 and on, from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq on, someone has been offsetting these deficits by buying a large amount of bonds, in effect, has become the indirect financier of these wars. That someone is China.

The fact is the US cannot go into war with China without someone going to to finance it, and that someone cannot be China itself. Even if China does not unload the bonds it owns, the fact that the biggest buyer of bonds isn’t buying is more than enough to cause a crash by itself. Once bonds become “worthless” it will trigger a chain reaction on other bond holders, even with other countries, causing the bonds to unload.

The problem is in the current peacetime situation, this feeds on itself. The buyer has to keep buying the bonds in order to protect the value of the bonds it previously owns. On the other hand, the US will have to pay several billions in interest alone each year; China can go into a major arms shopping spree just on this interest.

Primer is just paint. I don’t see why those pictures can’t be showing an older il76 that PLAAF already had, which was then full stripped down, perhaps even disassembled partially, removing absolutely everything so it could be built from ground up as a plane with a new mission. So they have to remove everything, including old paint, then do their stuff, weld around if needed, whatever, then again apply primer paint before they fully furbish it.

I mean, if we compare those two options – old plane being rebuilt from ground up for a brand new mission – and a brand new plane built from scratch – which option seems more likely?

Probably brand new. Because refit is actually a very expensive thing to do, and you have to amortize the cost over the life of the plane. The brand new plane will of course have much longer life, which means lower amortization cost. Given that the plane has a vital strategic purpose to the PLAAF, it gets a little shakier if you have to base it from an old plane. Extensive airframe overhaul and refit is something that requires the indepth technical knowledge of the factory, not just the factory but also the makers of the engine.

Look closely. Much like the MK41, the hatches are facing each other in sets of two. What you are seeing in the first picture is all 32 launchers there, a set of 4 x 8 cell VLS.

lets get back to the topic of the thread.

To get back on topic, personally in my opinion, scrap the requirement, and buy 60 more LCA and 60 more Su-30MKI instead.

Lol, that kind of maneuver is what I have seen pilots do. Check out the Middle East war episode of Dogfight! Mirage IIIs are turning similarly here then cutting through the turn of the MiG-17.

Just an example from the physics. A fighter can change direction at 800 km/h with 8Gs f.e. An AAM fired at zero G conditions maybe at 2400 km/h right than. To follow that single direction change of the fighter the AAM has to do 48 Gs at least.
Double the speed is four-times the Gs related.
It is much more complicated related further circumstances and smart AAMs or fighters, but to keep things simple.

The missile will end up turning in an outer circle then, which means less Gs. The missile does not have the wings or control surfaces that can exert the same control authority as a plane can.

But the superiority over an aircraft will still be huge. So maybe it pulls 30G turns instead of 40 or 50G – it’s still immensely better than anything with a man in. It’ll do more turns than a burnt-out rocket, & will not have lost speed coasting, so the loss of speed in turns will be less important, as it will have more to lose.

The 30/40/50Gs mentioned in missile quotes are actually acceleration figures, but somehow because of the G letter there, people think it has something to do with turns. For example, the Sparrow can go 40G, better than the Sidewinder, which is why the Sparrow can be more potent in close range engagements. But in terms of trying to outmaneuver something, an R-27 is said to be good with targets that maneuver up to 8G; an R-77 up to 12G. But of course the acceleration figures are much more higher than that, should be around 35 to 45G.

Who told you that? The US had the lowest and worst combat ratio in its entire history in the Vietnam War. In some cases it was 3 to 1 and maybe worst. When Phantoms are being shot down by fighters a generation behind like the MiG-17 that is not good. It caused a profounding rethinking in fighter doctrine that restressed air to air combat and help bring out planes like the F-16.

If such ratios were transferred to a “hot” war in NATO in the seventies, that would mean unaffordable and unsustainable losses.